Space Hulk: Deathwing Reveals Fearsome First Screens

The upcoming Warhammer 40,000 FPS Space Hulk: Deathwing features some mean-lookin' dudes squaring off against some mean-lookin' dudes.

Space Hulk: Deathwing was announced last September with a teaser trailer that didn't do much beyond set the mood, and to be honest the screens released today don't reveal a whole lot more than that. But it's the first we've heard about the game since the reveal, so let's take a look!

There's not much in the way of action going on here, or even a very good look at the setting, which based on these images can best be described as "dark." The Space Marines themselves are awfully pretty, if you like that sort of "how does this guy actually fit inside that thing?" motif, and while the Genestealers are rather more generically "Alien," I suppose there's not much that can be done about that - they are what they are, after all - and they're clearly still not the sort of thing you'd want to run into in a long, poorly-lit corridor. Which is exactly where you will be running into them, so it's a good thing you dressed for the occasion.

As we discussed previously, you'll play Space Hulk: Deathwing as a Librarian, giving you mastery of the powers of a Psyker, with multiple skill trees (either four or five, depending on which part of the press kit you believe) allowing you unlock and improve new abilities and powers. There's no release date - it was originally slated for sometime this year but the PR that accompanied these screens lists it as TBA - nor have any platforms been confirmed. But it's coming! Someday, and for something. We'll keep you posted.

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Some sort of indicator would have been nice for that, but then you're not really going to know if you're going to have LOS or cover on a position until you get where you're going. Urban warfare is extra confusing an difficult to predict, I think that's the point. Not all the side missions are in those kind of maps either. Can't say I really had a problem with it, it was harder doing those missions but not 'I can't carry on, this is no fun anymore' difficult. Practice for a bit on easy or if the worst comes to the worst you can just quit out of the mission if it's an industrial level and leave it, you'll probably come across one in story mode eventually but by then you should be practiced. Also, I assume you used the terrain view adjuster? It removed the higher levels of terrain from veiw, which could be pretty helpful in those levels, much easier to see what's on the floor.

Sometimes I've toyed with the idea of giving it another go. But, when I get the WH40K itch, there's all the DoW's now, which are much better games. So I don't really see a reason to go back. Also there's the problem that while it's possible to run the game nowadays, the map scrolling is way too fast on modern processors, which gets annoying after a while.

Tiamat666:I played Chaos Gate back in the day, always the first and second "story" missions, so far so good. But as soon as the random missions started I couldn't get myself to play any further. The map, some kind of industrial interior, was confusing as fuck. It was hard for me to figure out how to best move units from X to Y. Almost impossible to figure out from which position my units would have a clear line of fire or be in cover.

Maybe I could have skipped the random missions, but then I thought I would miss on all the XP and my units wouldn't be powerful enough later. So I never got past the first two story missions until I lost interest.

Some sort of indicator would have been nice for that, but then you're not really going to know if you're going to have LOS or cover on a position until you get where you're going. Urban warfare is extra confusing an difficult to predict, I think that's the point. Not all the side missions are in those kind of maps either. Can't say I really had a problem with it, it was harder doing those missions but not 'I can't carry on, this is no fun anymore' difficult. Practice for a bit on easy or if the worst comes to the worst you can just quit out of the mission if it's an industrial level and leave it, you'll probably come across one in story mode eventually but by then you should be practiced. Also, I assume you used the terrain view adjuster? It removed the higher levels of terrain from veiw, which could be pretty helpful in those levels, much easier to see what's on the floor.

Rot_At_The_Root:Going to have to check that out when it's released, like a lot of others here I was a fan of the board game.

What I would really like to see is something like Xcom:EW done 40k style. Necromunda or Inquisitor are just begging for something like that!

Have you played Chaos Gate?

I played Chaos Gate back in the day, always the first and second "story" missions, so far so good. But as soon as the random missions started I couldn't get myself to play any further. The map, some kind of industrial interior, was confusing as fuck. It was hard for me to figure out how to best move units from X to Y. Almost impossible to figure out from which position my units would have a clear line of fire or be in cover.

Maybe I could have skipped the random missions, but then I thought I would miss on all the XP and my units wouldn't be powerful enough later. So I never got past the first two story missions until I lost interest.

Andy Chalk:There's not much in the way of action going on here, or even a very good look at the setting, which based on these images can best be described as "dark."

But is it grim?

thaluikhain:Well, you can't have a Space Hulk game without it being terminators against genestealers.

They could make it more like Space Crusade instead. Very similar gameplay and concept, just with more varied enemies. There was even an expansion that featured psykers, so it could fit with this game pretty well.

Grabehn:I kinda want this to be good, since I've heard that a lot of games based on the 40K stuff is simply shit.

They seem to have got a bit of an undeserved reputation for this, but the fact is that simply aren't that many 40K games in the first place. Most of them aren't actually that bad, they just never seem to make the games people that people think would really work in the setting - FPS, RPG and strategy. See here. The Dawn of War series is great, both the original and recent Space Hulk games were good adaptations of the board game, Fire Warrior was far from great but really not terrible, I thought Space Marine was a bit shit but apparently some people liked it. Other than that, there's a couple of old turn-based games and a couple of portable ones. That's it. 19 games, and 11 of those are covered by just Dawn of War and Space Hulk.

Rot_At_The_Root:Going to have to check that out when it's released, like a lot of others here I was a fan of the board game.

What I would really like to see is something like Xcom:EW done 40k style. Necromunda or Inquisitor are just begging for something like that!

Have you played Chaos Gate?

It plays like X-com in terms of the shooty bits, probably a bit closer to the original though. Your guys also level up if they survive the mission and have enough xp. You can pick squad members, squad type and weapon loadout. It does lack the overall strategic elements of X-com, there's no research or choices over which objectives to defend etc, you just acquire new weapons and ammo in the course of your missions. There are optional side missions that can get you more equipment but the only risk is getting guys killed. TB said it doesn't run on modern OS, but I'm still rockin XP and it works fine and it's available as abondonware so at least you don't lose anything if it doesn't work.

OT: Don't quite know what it is about them but those screenshots look a bit off to me, there's something I don't like about them. Still, early days.

Also, while termies v genestealers might get kind of boring in an FPS you could always add genestealer hybrids. IDK if they had them in the later versiona of Spacehulk but they were added in the last expansion for the 1st ed game. IMO it didn't really work too well as it messed with the simple but well balanced asymmetric gameplay, but in an FPS that is unlikely to matter, a variety of enemies makes things more interesting.

Therumancer:Speaking for myself, I'd like to see them do something more RPG-like with the 40k license, especially now that they have a full line of RPG books and supplements out there. It's not that "Space Hulk" is bad, but it occurs to me that there is a lot more that can be done with Space Hulks as a concept than just have space marines shoot at Genestealers in hallways. I think half the problem is that everything they do is a wargame or a shooter it seems, and viewed through that limited lens it doesn't convey much of the flavor of the setting, and it comes across as being rather generic even when it's pretty.

I mean for example, a Space Hulk is a chaos-warped mass of ships that have fused together in the warp, generally full of valuable ancient and xeno technologies, which happen to be forbidden by The Imperium and it's minions. In theory there could be all kinds of things in there, alien defense systems, robots, surviving crewmembers living as cannibals and fighting the survivors of other ship crews like gangs, demons... etc... Given that it's made up of a number of different ships fused together the areas should feel different and in many cases be recognizable to what they were once for on the ship they came from (assuming the ship wasn't too alien). This is to say nothing of the fact that some ships have even been removed from Space Hulks (such is the possible history of a Rogue Trader Vessel) in functioning condition and such can make a huge prize.

While the graphics look good, and it fits the original board game, none of that awesome potential for storytelling really comes out when it's a simple matter of "We are brain dead space marines, we do not think for ourselves, we simply pursue the glory of the emperor, we shall shoot Genestealers in these fairly generic dark hallways...". I guess I shouldn't make fun, since I do like Space Marines... but really, I think so much more can be done with 40k. I mean an independent developer is making this game "Starcrawlers" all about looting abandoned, drifiting, space ships in a sort of science fiction dungeon crawl environment (I contributed to the kickstarter) and that seems like it's conceptially more like "Exploring a Space Hulk" than the bloody "Space Hulk" game itself. :)

THAT is a good idea! I would pay much money for a 40K game that starts out as a "standard" clearing of a space hulk and turns out into a "how-deep-does-the-rabbit-hole-go-clusterfuck" inside the Hulk. Since it's tainted by the warp, the physical space inside doesn't even have to make logical sense, it could be larger on the inside and have all sorts of stuff. There would still be genestealers, but the other enemies such as the xenos or cultists would juxtapose the genestealers well. Maybe genestealers would be mostly insta-kills, and would have radically different AI than the other enemies, which would make them stand out a lot more, preventing them from becoming run-of-the-mill.

OT: Yes please! This sounds like fun! Looks nice too! I'm interested in how they'll have the PC be a psycher rather than a more typical space-marine-shooter-man.

Therumancer:Speaking for myself, I'd like to see them do something more RPG-like with the 40k license, especially now that they have a full line of RPG books and supplements out there. It's not that "Space Hulk" is bad, but it occurs to me that there is a lot more that can be done with Space Hulks as a concept than just have space marines shoot at Genestealers in hallways. I think half the problem is that everything they do is a wargame or a shooter it seems, and viewed through that limited lens it doesn't convey much of the flavor of the setting, and it comes across as being rather generic even when it's pretty.

There really is a lot of potential around making a more RPG style WH40K game about an Inquisitor. They're given pretty much free reign to do whatever in service to the Emperor in the otherwise heavily controlled Imperium. Plus they've got a highly customizable retinue of weirdo's with them that could serve pretty well as your party.

I've had similar thoughts myself, I've long felt that something akin to Bioware's old "Knights Of The Old Republic" game could work with an Inquisitor investigating on different planets, solving mysteries on all of them while working on some metaplot, and recruiting people for his entourage, would work quite well.

I've also considered that someone like "Rogue Trader" would be similarly ideal if someone wanted to do a more ambitious game, combining that kind of adventuring with more involved space travel and ship to ship combat. While it's very old and primitive (and didn't work out great) something like "Whale's Voyage" might be an interesting place to start, not to mention various "Pirate/Trader" games that have been made combining trading, crew management, and RPG mechanics.

The flip side of Inquisitor is of course "Black Crusade", one of the cool things about that is that it's easy to justify people freebooting and just adventuring as a lot of Chaos space marines go running around solo or in small groups doing the mercenary thing, not to mention sorcerers in search of knowledge, and all kinds of other things. You don't need to necessarily be part of some huge horde setting out to despoil imperial worlds, you could actually be relatively nice guys exploring the eye of terror and trying to avoid entanglements that go too deeply into any of the various war bands and such.

While they have yet to do an RPG version of it, settings like the old "Necromunda" are also ideal for dark future adventuring, braving industial ruins looking for lost technologies which would be akin to magical items in other settings.

The point is a lot can be done with the universe, and it seems like they keep trying to re-do the same basic things.

I'll also say that when it comes to strategy games I've also kind of wondered why they have such a fixation on RTS games, when really being based on board games, I'd think some kind of turn-based or TRPG (like Disgaea but serious) would suit them better, given that the source material itself was a turn based game.

Therumancer:Speaking for myself, I'd like to see them do something more RPG-like with the 40k license, especially now that they have a full line of RPG books and supplements out there. It's not that "Space Hulk" is bad, but it occurs to me that there is a lot more that can be done with Space Hulks as a concept than just have space marines shoot at Genestealers in hallways. I think half the problem is that everything they do is a wargame or a shooter it seems, and viewed through that limited lens it doesn't convey much of the flavor of the setting, and it comes across as being rather generic even when it's pretty.

There really is a lot of potential around making a more RPG style WH40K game about an Inquisitor. They're given pretty much free reign to do whatever in service to the Emperor in the otherwise heavily controlled Imperium. Plus they've got a highly customizable retinue of weirdo's with them that could serve pretty well as your party.

Speaking for myself, I'd like to see them do something more RPG-like with the 40k license, especially now that they have a full line of RPG books and supplements out there. It's not that "Space Hulk" is bad, but it occurs to me that there is a lot more that can be done with Space Hulks as a concept than just have space marines shoot at Genestealers in hallways. I think half the problem is that everything they do is a wargame or a shooter it seems, and viewed through that limited lens it doesn't convey much of the flavor of the setting, and it comes across as being rather generic even when it's pretty.

I mean for example, a Space Hulk is a chaos-warped mass of ships that have fused together in the warp, generally full of valuable ancient and xeno technologies, which happen to be forbidden by The Imperium and it's minions. In theory there could be all kinds of things in there, alien defense systems, robots, surviving crewmembers living as cannibals and fighting the survivors of other ship crews like gangs, demons... etc... Given that it's made up of a number of different ships fused together the areas should feel different and in many cases be recognizable to what they were once for on the ship they came from (assuming the ship wasn't too alien). This is to say nothing of the fact that some ships have even been removed from Space Hulks (such is the possible history of a Rogue Trader Vessel) in functioning condition and such can make a huge prize.

While the graphics look good, and it fits the original board game, none of that awesome potential for storytelling really comes out when it's a simple matter of "We are brain dead space marines, we do not think for ourselves, we simply pursue the glory of the emperor, we shall shoot Genestealers in these fairly generic dark hallways...". I guess I shouldn't make fun, since I do like Space Marines... but really, I think so much more can be done with 40k. I mean an independent developer is making this game "Starcrawlers" all about looting abandoned, drifiting, space ships in a sort of science fiction dungeon crawl environment (I contributed to the kickstarter) and that seems like it's conceptially more like "Exploring a Space Hulk" than the bloody "Space Hulk" game itself. :)

I hope a Space hulk based FPS will have a slightly wider array of meanies that Genestealers, even if they are the only hostile in classic Space Hulk. Let's at least have cultists and a full array of Nid species, imagine coming face to face with a Hive Tyrant in one of those corridors, or finding that the control panel is in fact a Lictor (glomp!)?

Failing that, Orks! Orkzes Everywhere Boss!

Well, you can't have a Space Hulk game without it being terminators against genestealers.

OTOH, the game doesn't have to be Space Hulk, it could be about terminators against genestealers in an underground bunker, for example.